RETIRED Col. David Hackworth, one of the most decorated soldiers in American military history, has ordered many men into harm’s way and doesn’t take death lightly.

But when it comes to Saddam Hussein he says simply: “Let’s all meet in Baghdad and have a hanging party.”

Execution of this mass murderer, this constant brutal torturer of freedom, matters little to Hack.

“Assassination? Assassinate Saddam Hussein? Sure, if it can be done. But on last count he had survived 41 assassination attempts,” Hack was saying.

“No, simply we take the V Armored Corps from southern Turkey and have them drive through to Baghdad, simultaneously get the III Armored Corps from here to Kuwait and then have them meet up in Baghdad for a hanging party.”

Hackworth, author and renowned military strategist, applauded President Bush’s strike on Baghdad, but added, “smart bombs won’t take out Saddam.”

He said: “We have to understand that this, call it what you will, but I call it a war, has been going on for 10 years, longer than the Civil War, longer than the Revolutionary War. He is winning this war by wearing us out. He is wearing out the Army and the Navy, bleeding us and our efforts to death.”

Assassination of any monster shouldn’t cost anyone a night’s sleep. But in 1976, President Gerald Ford signed Executive Order 12333.

It said briefly: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States should engage in assassination or conspire to engage in assassination.”

Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, under President Ronald Reagan, told Sean Hannity of Fox News: “Yes, we can kill 18-year-old Iraqi soldiers, but we can’t touch the man who orders them into battle.

“You hear the argument that we have to keep Saddam in place because if we don’t we will destabilize the region . . . it has taken Saddam 30 years to bump off his opposition, so even if we got someone as bad as Saddam to take over, it would take a long time before he could gather Saddam’s power . . . what’s wrong with more chaos in Iraq?”

And it comes down to one thing: knock him off any way you can – by taking him into custody and having a “hanging party” or paying all kinds of money for a hit man or hit men.

We spend millions in trying to bring the monsters of the Lockerbie horror to justice, which is proper and right. Meanwhile, the architect of this horror, Moammar Khadafy, sits alive and well in one of a dozen of his palaces.

We bomb living hell out of Yugoslavia and ended up by bringing aggression to its knees. But what about Slobodan Milosevic, who wrote the blueprint for monstrosity in the Balkans?

See, I can’t get it.

We shoot the kids who don’t even know what they are fighting for when it comes to combat. But we don’t touch the monster behind those kids.

We put our own men in harm’s way, who are threatened by the orders of monsters.

We starve people, innocent people, with sanctions, but we don’t touch the beasts who put them in this situation.